2.
The bell above the café door jingled with a sound too sweet for a day so ordinary.
Isolde brushed her hands on her apron and glanced up from where she stood behind the counter.
Her long, silken hair shimmered in the muted sunlight spilling through the front windows. It was pinned back with a simple clip, though several strands had slipped loose, curling gently against the delicate line of her jaw.
She was radiant without realizing it, with eyes so large and luminous they looked almost unreal like they belonged to something born of myth, not blood.
She smiled politely at the man who entered. Just another customer.
The café was quiet for a Friday morning. Only two elderly regulars sat at their usual table, sipping tea and talking softly about things long past. Isolde had already wiped every table twice. The clock on the wall ticked louder than usual.
She liked the silence.
It didn’t judge her for her fraying shoes, or the way her heart clenched when she passed the university across the street the one she could never afford.
It didn’t ask why an eighteen-year-old girl with grades that once promised her the stars was now scraping cinnamon into lattes for strangers.
It simply was.
And then it wasn’t.
Because on the counter, exactly where there hadn’t been anything a moment before, was a box.
A gift.
Wrapped in pale ivory paper. Tied with an inky black ribbon, silk and sharp against the soft tones of the packaging. There was no name. No delivery notice. No sound, no warning. Just there as if it had always been.
Isolde blinked. Looked around.
No one new. No movement.
Still, her fingers moved before her thoughts did. She reached for the note tucked beneath the ribbon.
It was written in deep blue ink, in a hand too elegant to be anything but old-moneyed.
To the girl who doesn’t know she’s beautiful even when she cries in the storeroom at lunch.
From Your Secret Admirer.
Her breath caught.
No one had seen her that day. She was sure of it.
She’d wept quietly, knees to chest, biting her sweater sleeve so no one would hear.
Her aunt had screamed at her that morning, called her a burden.
Said she was lucky she hadn’t ended up in the streets like her mother. Isolde had nodded, apologized like she always did.
But someone had seen her.
Carefully, she untied the ribbon and peeled back the paper.
Inside was a small glass bottle nestled in black velvet.
Perfume.
But not any kind she recognized from store shelves.
The bottle was vintage, delicate. The label was in French Nuit de Cendre. Night of Ash.
She uncapped it, just barely.
The scent that whispered from the bottle was dark, haunting.
Like roses that bloomed at midnight, smoke curling in a cathedral, or velvet rubbed with crushed cloves. She felt it wrap around her.
A shiver danced across her skin.
Isolde blinked and hastily closed the bottle. She shouldn’t keep it. It could be dangerous. What if it was someone playing a cruel joke?
But something about the precision of the handwriting, the intentionality of the wrapping—it wasn’t careless. This had been chosen.
For her.
She glanced at the note again.
From Your Secret Admirer.
Heat bloomed under her cheeks.
Her? The girl with café-stained fingers and clothes that had seen too many washes? Who barely spoke to customers unless she had to?
A bitter voice inside whispered that it couldn’t be real. That maybe someone wanted to laugh at her.
But there was no cruelty in the note. Only something sharper. Intimate. Like the words had been carved into paper with knowledge, not whim.
The bell above the door chimed again, and she quickly stashed the box behind the counter. Her heart was fluttering like a moth caught in glass.
The rest of the day passed in strange silence. Every time someone walked in, she watched them too closely.
Every deep voice made her chest tighten. She burned her tongue on tea and knocked over a sugar bowl.
When her shift finally ended, dusk was rolling in like fog, tinting the world in lavender and shadow.
She walked home with the gift clutched in her arms, tucked under her coat like it might vanish if someone saw.
Her aunt wasn’t home.
She tiptoed into the tiny room she called hers and sat cross-legged on the bed. Laid the box out in front of her like it was an altar.
She read the note again.
Her lashes fluttered as she imagined who might’ve sent it. Some kind student at the university who’d seen her through the window? A mysterious customer with kind eyes?
She never even considered it might be something worse.
That while she unwrapped his gift, Dante Valencourt had already begun to unwrap her.
From the third story of the building across the street, behind a set of polarized glass that turned night into mirror, Dante sat in a velvet-backed chair, watching.
He could see her perfectly.
He’d chosen the location of his temporary residence for that reason alone.
The café had been quaint charming, unassuming. But when he saw her behind the counter, pouring cream with those delicate, trembling hands, his interest sharpened into something far more vicious.
He hadn’t meant to care.
He didn’t do softness.
But she had a mouth like sin wrapped in innocence. A body untouched by understanding. A soul that hadn’t yet learned how ugly the world could truly be.
He could teach her.
Make her into something holy and broken.
She would be his new art.
Her kindness would become a thing of pain. Her shyness, a leash. Her purity, a canvas.
He watched her cradle the perfume like it meant something, like it was from someone safe.
His lips curved into a cruel smile.
She didn’t yet know that the scent was custom-blended.
He’d had it made with the oils he remembered from the day he first walked past her.
Cinnamon from the café, the hint of vanilla she used in her hair, and a base of oud and vetiver masculine, smoky, a fingerprint of him.
When she wore it, she’d carry his presence.
And soon—very soon—he would give her a second gift.